Disaster Recovery Lab

Commitment by

SBP

In 2013, St. Bernard Project (SBP) committed to building out the Disaster Recovery Lab (DRL) to cull, develop, and provide a comprehensive array of pre- and post-disaster resilience and recovery strategies. SBP will work with communities vulnerable to disaster, as well as corporate and industry partners to identify, document, and share best practices through the creation of a playbook that will detail a standardized and deployable model for post-disaster recovery. SBP will then use this playbook to train other organizations in SBP's recovery model. In the first year, SBP will train five community-based rebuilding organizations and provide trainings for more than 1,250 families and businesses in SBP's risk mitigation practices. The DRL will work with communities to understand and mitigate their risks, and to put in place practices that will overcome common barriers and ensure an efficient, effective, and predictable recovery.

Countries

Commitment by

Partner(s) of the Commitment Maker(s)

APPROACH
SBP commits to building out the Disaster Recovery Lab (DRL) so that it culls, develops and provides a comprehensive array of pre- and post-disaster resilience and recovery strategies to communities. SBP will work with corporate and industry partners to identify, document and share best practices to create an efficient approach for understanding and mitigating risks from disaster, eliminating common barriers to delay and, in the residential recovery arena, utilizing a standardized, coordinated and efficient model of post-disaster recovery. DRL, through a team of Disaster Recovery Fellows, will provide technical support, training and open access to all processes and procedures from SBP's residential recovery model to community-based organizations in disaster-impacted communities.
For communities at risk of disaster, SBP will work with corporate and industry partners to develop two components: 1) mechanisms to relay the residential and business risks facing a community, and options for mitigating those risks; and 2) solutions addressing common barriers to efficient recovery, such as contractor fraud. These solutions include distributing checklists and launching community-based 'badging' campaigns to help residents identify qualified, capable and insured contractors.
Second, for disaster impacted communities, SBP will work with corporate and industry partners, such as Farmers Insurance and Toyota, to develop and document a best-practices driven 'playbook' or 'manual' that will detail a standardized and deployable model for post-disaster recovery. SBP's Disaster Recovery Fellows will use this playbook to train other organizations in SBP's recovery model.
In New York, specifically, SBP will partner with Toyota's TSSC (Toyota Production System Support Center) in two important ways. First, TSSC will train the SBP trainers to fully incorporate the tenants of the TPS (Toyota Production System) model into SBP's training curriculum and methods. Second, TSSC will provide direct training to select organizations that SBP supports. TSSC has more than twenty years of experience in helping companies increase efficiency of their production systems. In the past, TSSC partnered with SBP to reduce SBP's construction time by 48 percent, from 116 days to 61 days. This new partnership with TSSC will ensure that SBP optimally positions other organizations with the systems and culture necessary for efficiency and continuous improvement.
ACTION PLAN
August 2013: Refine current St. Bernard Project practices into preliminary manual (Complete).
October 2013: Identify New York-based disaster recovery organizations that would benefit from SBP's training and support.
November 2013: Commence training in New York.
November 2013: Secure partners for development of pre-disaster risk assessment and mitigation curriculum.
December 2013: Complete second iteration of post-disaster training manual, in partnership with Farmers Insurance.
March 2014: Complete curriculum for pre-disaster risk assessment and mitigation curriculum.
Throughout 2014: Identify vulnerable communities and send DRL Fellows to educate community stakeholders in risk mitigation and resiliency.
When disasters strike, dispatch DRL Fellows to provide on-site technical assistance in rapid recovery.

Background

Disasters are happening more frequently. According to the Center for Research on Epidemiology of Disasters, from 2000 to 2009 there was a 233% increase in the frequency of natural disasters across the globe, as compared to the period between 1980 and 1989. Furthermore, disasters are frequently stronger, more severe and are hitting more disparate portions of America. Delayed, inefficient disaster recovery has a tremendous human cost. When recovery is not prompt, efficient and predictable, families may suffer long-lasting psychological impact and small- and medium-sized businesses, often the core of disaster impacted communities, are stretched past the breaking point.
These delays, and their associated costs, are not inevitable. Pre-disaster risk assessment and mitigation, plans to reduce common barriers to efficiency and the utilization of a standardized, coordinated best-practices-driven recovery model, can mitigate such problems and lead to recoveries that are consistent with the best of American values and abilities.
Through its Disaster Recovery Lab, the St. Bernard Project (SBP) will work to help communities understand and mitigate disaster-related risks, share best practices, prevent common barriers to recovery and help communities utilize SBP's standardized, repeatable and proven-effective recovery model.
Disaster Recovery Lab (DRL) has two components. For communities at-risk of disaster, DRL will help them understand and mitigate their risks and utilize systems to address two common barriers that delay recovery: contractor fraud and the lag in time between disaster and financial support. For disaster impacted communities, DRL will share all components of SBP's vertically-integrated, all-under-one-roof model of post disaster recovery, so that best practices and lessons learned are incorporated into all phases of post-disaster residential recovery.

Partnership Opportunities

Seeking partners/resources
Offering resources
SBP is seeking skill-based support and best practice information from industries traditionally underrepresented in grassroots disaster recovery, with a particular emphasis on the financial, technology, insurance, and educational sectors. SBP is also seeking financial support to expand DRL.
SBP is offering partnership opportunities to communities at risk of disaster as well as communities recently impacted by disaster. SBP is also offering opportunities for corporate partners to offer meaningful skill-based employee engagement and knowledge sharing, which will be embraced and adopted by DRL.

Progress Reports

March 2015

In February 2015, the St. Bernard Project (SBP) hired a Director of Disaster Resilience and Recovery Lab (DRRL), Charlie Martel, the former Chief Counsel for the U.S. Senate investigation into the shortcomings of the federal Hurricane Katrina housing recovery programs. In April 2014, Zurich Insurance awarded multi-year funding and skill-based support to SBP for DRRL, and determined that the Lab should formally expand its focus to include pre-disaster resilience. For that reason, SBP renamed the program, Disaster Resilience and Recovery Lab (DRRL). This pre-disaster program will train and build resilience in communities identified as vulnerable to disaster by Zurich Insurance, and selected by SBP. The selection criteria include history of declared disasters, hazard risk estimates, rates of home ownership, socio-economic profiles and disaster type (floods, hurricanes, tornados) similar to those in communities SBP has previously worked.

Zurich Insurance identified 45 communities. From this list, SBP and DRRL will select 15 communities by the end of March 2015. DRRL's goal is to provide resiliency training in these 15 communities in the year following selection, working initially in a subset of these communities during a pilot stage of the resilience program. The training will focus on three audiences: homeowners, small to mid-sized businesses, and municipalities.

To date, SBP and its affiliates have rebuilt 123 homes damaged by Superstorm Sandy in New York City and New Jersey. SBP's rebuilding expanded into Sea Bright, New Jersey, and now includes all of Monmouth County and parts of Ocean County.

SBP has also provided post-disaster rebuilding training to All Hands Volunteers to accelerate the impact of their post-Sandy rebuilding work. With the support of Farmers Insurance, SBP published its "Disaster Recovery Playbook: A Guide to Residential Recovery." This online manual is a step-by-step guide for organizations seeking to use SBP's proven rebuilding model.

In February 2015, SBP met with industry leaders in insurance and resiliency to form a coalition to support DRRL initiatives. SBP plans to work with the Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS) to promote the Institute's FORTIFIEDbuilding standards in DRRL resilience and recovery work.